From tears I hadn’t even felt fall.
“Get in the car, Truth,” he said again.
And this time, it wasn’t a command.
It was something softer.
Something that sounded almost like concern.
I stood up slowly, my legs shaky, my pride in tatters.
Amai opened the passenger door and waited.
I hesitated for just a second—because getting in that car felt like crossing a line I couldn’t uncross, like accepting a kindness I didn’t have words for yet.
But I was tired.
And sticky.
And so fucking humiliated I wanted to disappear.
So, I got in.
The leather seats were cool and soft, and the air conditioning hit my skin like a blessing. Amai closed the door behind me, walked around to the driver’s side, and slid in with the kind of controlled grace that made everything he did look effortless.
He didn’t say anything.
And I sat there in his expensive car, covered in strawberry Fanta, crying silent tears I couldn’t stop, and realized something that terrified me:
I’d just learned that you don’t tell Amai Landry no.
And I wasn’t sure if that was the most dangerous thing that had ever happened to me or the safest.
He smelled like cedar and bergamot. Expensive cologne that probably had a French name I couldn’t pronounce. It mixed with the artificial sweetness of the strawberry Fanta still clinging to my dress, my skin, and my hair.
The contrast was humiliating.
He started the engine—smooth, quiet, powerful—and pulled away from the curb without asking where I lived.
I should’ve been alarmed by that.
But I was too tired to care.
The city slid past us—shotgun houses painted in fading pastels, corner stores with bars on the windows, people sitting on porches, trying to catch a breeze in the heat. My neighborhood. My world. Nothing like the one Amai lived in.
And here I was, sitting in a Mercedes that cost more than Mama’s house, covered in soda like a child who couldn’t handle her own life.
The silence stretched between us.
Heavy.
Suffocating.
I kept my hands folded in my lap, my eyes fixed on the window, trying to disappear into the leather seat.
“What happened?” Amai asked.
His voice was calm. Even. But there was concern underneath it—something sharp that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
